Edward Lee

Edward Lee (1482-13 September 1544) was Archbishop of York from 1531 to 1544, succeeding Thomas Wolsey and preceding Robert Holgate.

Biography
Edward Lee was born in Kent in 1482, the grandson of the Lord Mayor of London, and a family friend of Thomas More. In 1500, he was elected a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and he became an ordained deacon in 1504. In 1518, he met Desiderius Erasmus at the University of Louvain, and the two engaged in friendly polemics, with Lee favoring a traditionalist position. In 1525 and 1529, he was sent as an ambassador to Spain, and he was sent to meet with Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V at Bologna in 1530 in an attempt to win their support for King Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. In 1531, he was made Archbishop of York, succeeding the late Thomas Wolsey. In 1536, he was forced to take the oath of the Pilgrimage of Grace after the commander of Pontefract Castle, Lord Darcy, decided to defect to the rebels. However, he later changed his mind, and he was dragged from the pulpit. He would not return to the king's good graces until Thomas Cromwell intervened in his favor, and he determined the invalidity of the king's loveless marriage to Anne of Cleves. Lee died in 1544.